Quote:
Originally Posted by Migrant_Coconut
More accurate history: The Social Credit Party has been BC's right-wing party for most of last century. Some centrists tried to move away to the new BC Liberals, but the SoCreds followed them, and the Libs became a centre-right party. Now that the Libs are tainted as well (as well as being more and more radicalized and crossing the aisle to the Cons), they've rebranded again, but nobody's buying it this time.
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Exactly. There is a long and very clear history of centrists, centre-right and right-wing folks shifting in the shadows and using whatever political vehicle is the most expedient at a given moment. That meant taking over the BC Liberals in the 1990s when the Socred brand had reached its sell-by date, and today it means abandoning the Liberals/United for the Conservatives.
It can take a couple of election cycles for the dust to settle but eventually the coalition comes back together. We just happen to be in the middle of a period where there's a (testy) divorce.
I'd also add it is quite an indictment of our mediocre politics that the best that can be offered by the right at the moment is "we should try to merge just to defeat the NDP" rather than putting policy alternatives and ideas forward in any meaningful sense -- especially on United's part, where its clear that the openness to merging is about power, not about ideas. Maybe if they had the ability to articulate their own approach, we'd finally start changing governments by way of voting parties in, rather than out.
And that by no means excuses the Conservatives, who also seem to be focusing their platform around idiotic culture-war issues that the mainstream voter has no interest in, and tinkering around the edges on cost of living, with no actual plan to address systemic and fundamental issues. It's the NDP's election to lose, as it was a year ago.
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